r/multilingualparenting • u/Holiday_Parsnip5 • 2d ago

Tip Try using a physical dictionary!

My husband and I do OPOL with our child. I speak to our child in my heritage language, which I learned at age 7. I hadn’t used it regularly in a while before having our kid so was fairly clunky when they were born, including in vocab. I found myself on my phone looking stuff up often, which sucked, because a) I try to not be on my phone around them and b) I don’t want to paint the phone/Internet as the only source of all knowledge.

Then I found this random pocket dictionary translating between my heritage language and English (community + husband’s language) and started to use that. My kid looooved it. They would thumb through it all the time and “look things up” (2 yo, lol) and dad could use it with them as well. We upgraded and got a huge one, because the pocket one lacked many more niche words. It’s been a super fun tool for all of use and I love that it’s taught them about books as a reference!

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10

u/NewOutlandishness401 🇺🇦 + 🇷🇺 in 🇺🇸 | 8y, 5y, 2y 2d ago

We use screens really sparingly, but for some reason, we never got around to getting a physical dictionary, I don’t know why. It’s a great idea, thank you for suggesting it. I remember how much I liked thumbing through our dictionaries and encyclopedias when I was little. Our kids should have the same opportunity to do so.

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u/KiwiEmerald 2d ago

Even for monolingual aspects we try to emphasis dictionaries, it helps children learn how to look things up manually, less relianse on tech

3

u/rosemarynewmar 2d ago

I love this idea! Thank you for sharing!

3

u/Previous-Jump-1725 2d ago

Thanks you for sharing, My 5yrs son told me many times to ask chatGPT for things I dont know and explain to him. I guess I will have to try to use dictionary books more.

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u/nc63146 1d ago

We got some bilingual picture dictionaries that have seen heavy use.  They're not as vocab dense as regular dictionaries but really great for building thematic vocabulary, plus pictures!

(Also phones are tools, so I try to narrate what I'm doing on the phone as I'm doing it.  I try not to mindlessly stare at a screen in front of the kids but I 'll tell them when I'm sending a message to Grandma or ordering groceries or looking something up. It's good motivation to keep my own screen time productive.)